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Batty's blog

(In the interest of full disclosure, it is important to point out before you read this that I HATE the TSA.)

In "Inside Job: My Life as an Airport Screener," journalist Barbara Peterson reports on her brief time working undercover as a TSA agent. She describes the hassles of working for such a difficult and maligned organization whose rules and procedures are just as confusing to the poor saps who have to enforce them as they are to you and me. She describes long hours, pissy or even violent passengers, and the kind of governmental waste we're unfortunately all accustomed to.

Ultimately, she concludes that the problems are due to poor management and inadequate funding, not due to the evil bastards working the lines at the US airport near you.

Since the weather has been so unpardonably warm these days, I decided to finally get out on the tarp in the empty parking space next to mine and get this expansion chamber / muffler installed and recalibrate the CVT to take advantage of it.

An expansion chamber is a neat little exhaust hack for 2-stroke engines that causes the engine to burn more fuel/air mixture on each stroke, giving you increased power (and decreased gas mileage, but what can I say, I'm a fashion of slavery). Read about how they work here, and look at an informative animation of one in action here.

A more aggressive drive pulley on a scooter with a continuously variable transmission (CVT) will improve performance by reshaping the power curve of a CVT and increasing the ratio of the top end.

This HOWTO will explain how to upgrade the drive pulley in a 2006 Yamaha Jog ZR scooter, but should be applicable to any late-model (2000 or newer) Jog or CV50 (frame number SA12* or SA16*). Basic concepts will also be applicable to any scooter with a CVT (I learned much of this from reading about Italian scooters.)

Second in my super-popular series of HOWTOs for the 2006 Yamaha Jog ZR. I replaced the stock speedometer, which topped out at 60km/h, with a Kitaco custom one that goes to 120km/h. I now know how fast my scooter goes: 70km/h.

Today I hope to get outside and replace parts of the transmission to up that further.

So as some people in the world may know, I live in Japan and have a much-beloved 2006 Yamaha Jog ZR, which I bought in Sept. 2006 not only as a means of transport (rush hour traffic jams mean nothing to me now, as I zip between cars, between lanes, and in front of stopped cars so I'm always the first through the intersection), but also as a "fixer-upper," as there is an almost endless array of custom parts available for these bikes in Japan (and elsewhere--but they all begin in Japan).